


Let's Take it from the Top

by pterawaters



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alcohol, Infidelity, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Wedding, M/M, Not McRoll Friendly, Season/Series 06, Spoilers, Woke Up Married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4757669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pterawaters/pseuds/pterawaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve goes along with the bachelor-party-in-Vegas, because he chose Danny to be his best man, and that's what Danny wants to do. Unfortunately, the things that happen in Vegas don't necessarily stay there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Take it from the Top

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I wrote another woke up married fic. This one's based on some of the spoilers for season 6, if you want to avoid those.

Steve leans over toward Danny and says, "Thanks for doing this, buddy. I know you're not the biggest fan of this whole marriage-to-Catherine thing."

"Hey, I love Catherine," Danny replies, quietly because Kono is sleeping in the window seat beside him. "Almost as much as you do, probably. I'm just not a fan of the way she treated you that once. If you say things are fixed, then they're fixed, and I'm gonna give you the best bachelor party of all time."

"Of all time?" Steve asks with a chuckle. "Really, Danny?"

"Of all time," Danny replies with a sage nod. "We've got a great weekend ahead of us, and then next Saturday, you get to be a married man. A real-life grown-up and everything, so we gotta have our fun while we can."

"Catherine is fun," Steve insists. "I'll still have fun after we're married. Don't buy into the stereotypes, Danny."

Danny gives Steve a disbelieving look that lasts so long, Steve has to look away. He clears his throat and asks, "So what're we doing first?"

"Buffet dinner," Danny says with a grin, "followed by a little trip through the casino. You know, I hear drinks on the casino floor are free."

Steve shakes his head. "I think that's a myth."

From his seat across the aisle, Lou leans over and shakes his head. "It's not a myth. As long as you keep playing, they'll keep bringing you drinks. Have none of y'all been to Vegas before?"

Steve shakes his head and Danny says, "Atlantic City."

Lou grumbles something Steve can't make out and turns back to reading his book. 

Steve smiles over at Danny, who grins back, and Steve's actually excited. This is going to be so much fun.

~*~

Steve thinks that he's gone soft in the five years since he's been a Navy SEAL. It's the only way to explain the hangover he's experiencing. He groans, holding his head with his hands to keep it from splitting open. 

Danny groans back, but he sounds a lot closer than the other bed in the room. Steve opens his eyes and silently thanks himself for having the good sense to close the blackout curtain the night before. There's bright morning light leaking into the room around the edges of the curtain, but not so much that it exacerbates his headache. 

Danny's bed is empty, though Steve does notice the bouquet of half-wilted flowers and the white suit jacket tossed onto it. 

Steve turns and finds Danny on the pillow next to Steve's, in Steve's bed. Okay. Not that surprising. Maybe something happened to Danny's bed. Steve seems to remember a bottle of champagne they passed between each other. It probably spilled. 

Steve wonders if Danny always sleeps without a shirt. You'd think if he was going to have to share with Steve, he'd at least put on a shirt. Then again, though Danny is usually a pretty thoughtful guy, he does have some blind spots now and again. 

Steve swings his feet off the edge of the bed, sitting still until the room stops spinning. This is reminding him uncomfortably of the drugs Wo Fat pumped into him the last time they met. That thought has Steve's stomach contents rising in his throat and he barely makes it to the toilet before losing the remainders of his buffet dinner from the night before. 

Once he's done retching and has rinsed his mouth out with water from the tap, Steve realizes that he's naked. Why is Steve naked? What happened to his clothes?

Steve closes the bathroom door and leans against it, shielding his eyes with his hand. He tries to remember, and gets as far as Danny practically manhandling Steve into his blue suit before they went down to the casino floor. 

~*~

"This is stupid, Danny," Steve said as he stood there, letting Danny tie his tie. "It's not like we have all that much money to gamble. We go in looking like this and people are going to get the wrong idea."

"Not people, Steven," Danny said, finishing with the tie and reaching for Steve's coat. " _Women_. And that's the point. You go out looking like this, you're inevitably going to spark some interest."

"But, Danny, I–" Steve tried to say, but Danny had cut him off.

"I don't care that you're getting married next week. What I care about is the fact that when these women come over to say hi, and they do find out you're getting married, I will be right there, your conveniently single best friend."

"Ah," Steve said, letting Danny slip the coat up onto his shoulders. "So I have to suffer for your quest to get laid this weekend?"

Danny's smile was brilliant as he turned Steve around and looked him up and down, "You got it, buddy."

"I swear to god, Danny, if you kick me out of this hotel room because you found some woman foolish enough to sleep with you," Steve said, taking the shoes Danny handed him and slipping them on, even though they were uncomfortably tight, "I'm revoking your best man status."

Danny had grinned again and steered Steve from the hotel room. "Don't worry about it, Steve. I've got it all under control."

~*~

His head pounding, Steve drinks as much cool water from the tap as he can stomach and runs a warm shower. He lets himself stand under the spray for a few lazy moments before unwrapping the soap supplied by the hotel and washing himself off. The shampoo bottle is way over on the counter, so Steve just runs the body soap through his hair as well. He rinses until he's clean and can no longer justify the waste of water, so he turns off the tap.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, Steve takes a few deep breaths. He remembers the buffet. He remembers losing a hundred dollars at the craps table and calling it quits. He remembers watching Danny throw the dice, everyone watching as he got three winning rolls in a row. Steve remembers Danny cashing out his winnings and taking the whole party down the strip to a bar for drinks.

Steve remembers dancing, which is weird, because Steve doesn't dance, and neither does Danny, but Steve remembers it happening. He remembers dancing with Kono, and looking over to see Danny dancing with a stranger. Steve remembers feeling angry about Danny dancing with said stranger, but not really why.

Putting it out of his mind, Steve makes sure the towel around his waist is well-fastened, and then slips out of the bathroom. He manages to pull some underwear, a pair of cargos, and a t-shirt from his suitcase without waking Danny up, which counts as a win at this point. 

As he's dressing in the bathroom, Steve thinks maybe he just lost at strip poker or something, and that's why he was naked. For the sake of his relationship with Catherine, that's what he's going to believe happened, at least until he gets any evidence to the contrary. 

Now that he's dressed, Steve goes back into the main room and starts rooting around for some painkillers for this headache he's got going on. He comes across a cardboard coaster from a bar Steve sort of remembers. He thinks he and Danny went there after the rest of the bachelor party wimped out on them. 

~*~

Steve took a sip of his beer, and it wobbled a little when he set it down. He looked at Danny across the table – Danny's tie was completely missing, and his vest was hanging open, Steve thought Kono was wearing Danny's jacket last – and Steve asked, "Do you really think marrying Catherine is a bad idea?"

"Oh, come on, man," Danny said, his head resting on one hand, his other hand thrown wide. "You're getting married in a week. I'm the best man, for Chrissakes. All I can say at this juncture is, 'I'm sure you'll be very happy together. She's a fantastic woman.'"

There was this piece of Steve's brain that he had been ignoring for a long time, but suddenly it seemed more important than anything else on the planet. "But that's not the truth, is it? You still don't think I should marry her."

Danny jutted out his chin and stared Steve right in the eyes for a long moment before saying, "If you want the truth, I will give it to you. Are you sure?"

"Yeah, Danny. I'm sure," Steve said, reaching across the table to put his hand around Danny's wrist. "Tell me."

Danny lifted up his head and shrugged as he brought his hands together on the bar table, reclaiming his wrist from Steve's grip. Looking down at his hands, Danny said, "Okay. Here it goes. You, as you know, have control issues." 

Before Steve could argue that point for what felt like the millionth time, Danny held up a finger and started speaking again. 

"You also have abandonment issues up the wazoo, okay? And this thing with Catherine is like your control issues," Danny held up his right hand, fingers lightly curled, and then set it down on the table, far off to his right, "and your abandonment issues," Danny held up his left hand and did the same thing on the left, before moving his two fists toward each other, "are in a head-on collision." Danny smashed his fists together and mimed an explosion. "You're not marrying Catherine because you want to spend the rest of your life with her. You're doing it so she won't leave you again."

Steve's first impulse was to tell Danny he was wrong, that he didn't know what he was talking about. Still, Danny's words caught on the little piece of Steve's mind and pulled on it until it started to grow. He took another sip of his beer and asked, "What's the difference? I don't ever want to be without Catherine. Doesn't that mean I want to spend the rest of my life with her?"

Danny raised his eyebrows at Steve and scoffed. "Are you serious? How can you _not_ see the distinction between wanting someone because of who they are, versus wanting someone because you're sick of being alone?"

"But I am sick of being alone," Steve pointed out. "I spent a year without Catherine and I hated it, because I love her and I hated not being with her."

"You hated it because you were no longer getting laid on the regular," Danny insisted, leaning over the table and pointing at Steve. He'd done the finger-in-face thing so often that it no longer annoyed Steve. Instead, Steve found it almost endearing. "Believe me. I know how that feels. I'm in the midst of that feeling _right now_. It sucks so much. Still, that doesn't mean I'm gonna marry the next person who touches my dick." He vaguely gestured around the room, which reminded Steve that they were supposed to be here to find Danny a hook up.

Steve laughed, looking around at the other bar patrons and imagining Danny walking down the aisle with any of them. Absolutely serious, Steve leaned closer to Danny and said, "None of the women here are hot enough for you." Then, because Danny had said "person" instead of "woman", Steve added, "None of the men either." 

"None in my age range, anyway," Danny said, nodding to a group of women in their early twenties. "I mean, the age difference was what really killed my relationship with Melissa."

"That and the fact that her ex stabbed you," Steve pointed out, because he still couldn't get over the fact that he almost lost his best friend because of some jackass abuser from New York, and because Danny had turned off his phone, even to Steve. 

Danny almost left Steve that day, and Steve couldn't do anything about it, and that had practically driven Steve insane. Maybe Steve understood slightly why Danny thought Steve had abandonment and control issues. 

Danny tilted his head, agreeing with Steve. "That, and the stuff with my kids, and the fact that she was never a hundred percent okay with the fact that you and I have a fairly close relationship." Danny shrugged and finished off his beer. "You want another?"

Steve shook his head and grabbed Danny's arm to keep him from heading up toward the bar. "Melissa was jealous? Of me?"

Danny met Steve's eyes for a moment, then looked away. "Yeah. She, uh, didn't like me talking about you all the time either. I told her, you can't try to control the amount of time a man spends with his friends, and wasn't that the sort of thing her ex used to do."

Steve's mind filled in the gaps for how that conversation must have gone. He whistled in commiseration. "Wow."

Danny shrugged again. "Yeah, well. That's how it went down. Next time I'll find a girlfriend who already has her own friends and kids and exes and won't begrudge me mine."

Steve nodded and let go of Danny's arm, watching as he went up to the bar and brought back two red cocktails, instead of beers. Steve raised an eyebrow at him.

"I was feeling festive," Danny said by way of explanation, pushing one of the cocktails at Steve and then raising his glass. Steve tapped the rim of his cocktail against Danny's as Danny said, "To healthy relationships!"

Laughing, Steve took a sip of his drink and gagged at the amount of sugar in that one sip. "Jesus, Danny! Are you trying to kill me?"

Danny grinned, and Steve wondered if Catherine would ever get jealous of Steve's relationship with Danny. If she already was, she hadn't discussed it with him. Maybe that meant she never would be.

Maybe it just meant that neither of them were very good at talking.

~*~

Steve rustles around in their disaster-zone of a room, still looking for some pain killers. He must make enough noise to wake Danny, because there's a groan from across the room. "Oh, kill me now."

"You, too, huh?" Steve asks, his voice soft so his skull doesn't crack open. "I think it was those fruity cocktails that really did us in. Do you have painkillers?"

Danny groans again, rustling around in the sheets. "Uh, yeah. My bag in the bathroom." He shifts around again, mumbling about something, as Steve heads for the bathroom.

He finds Danny's shaving kit, which indeed has a bottle of ibuprofen. Steve palms the bottle and fills two of the hotel-room cups with tap water. When he gets back into the main room, Danny is sitting up in bed, frowning at a piece of paper as he reads it.

Steve sets one glass down on the nightstand next to Danny, and the other on the desk as he pops open the bottle of pills. Steve takes three of the pills, because that seems like the right dose today, and then closes the bottle, chucking it over to the bed as he swallows the pills with his water. Curious, Steve asks Danny, "What are you reading?"

"Please tell me this is a joke," Danny says, holding out the piece of paper. "Please tell me this is some sort of tourist trap memento, and not a legally-binding document."

Concerned, Steve takes the piece of paper from Danny and tilts it toward the light coming from the bathroom. "Certificate of Marriage," he reads out loud, and he can feel the blood draining from his face as he remembers _everything_

~*~

Steve was riding just the right side of drunk and feeling handsy as he and Danny walked down the strip in search of another bar or casino or something, because they were on a mission to get Danny laid, and dammit, Steve was not the sort of man who failed missions. 

He threw his arm around Danny's shoulders and said into Danny's ear, "We're getting you laid tonight if I have to do it myself."

Danny shuddered, his arm slipping around Steve's waist. "You sure about that, buddy?" Danny's hand slid lower, until he was cupping Steve's ass well enough to give it a squeeze. 

Steve laughed and said, "Catherine would understand, right? Finish the mission at any cost. Never leave a man behind!"

So softly, Steve could barely hear him over the midnight traffic and the sounds pouring out of the casino to their right, Danny said, "Yeah, but she left you."

Steve stopped walking, right in the middle of the sidewalk, and really thought about what Danny has just said to him. He didn't begrudge Catherine the fact that she left him behind to get the children to safety. He would've done the same thing. He _had_ done the same thing when Freddie died. No, the part Steve had always had a problem with was Catherine texting him ( _texting_ him) to let him know she'd found her place somewhere else. Somewhere other than with him.

"She left me," Steve said, as Danny steered him out of the middle of the sidewalk and against a big, white building. "Danny, she left me."

"I know, buddy," Danny said, pulling Steve into a hug. Like always, Steve had to stoop down a little to really get his arms around Danny, but he didn't mind. He never minded. Right now, he needed the hug, because the only person Steve had been able to count on not leaving him was Danny. 

Sniffling into Danny's shoulder, Steve asked, "Why? Why do you stick around?"

Danny thumped Steve on the back a few times, and shrugged. "I don't know. I love you. You're family. That's just what you do for family."

Steve shakes his head, which makes him feel more than a little unbalanced. "No, that's what _you_ do. And we're not even family. My mom is family, but who the hell knows where she is? My dad was family, and he sent me away. My sister," Steve tried to compose himself, but now that the words were flowing out of him, they were impossible to stop. "My sister has her own family now. And my Aunt doesn't have much time left. _Catherine_ is going to be my family, but I…" Steve pressed a hand to his chest, where it felt like his heart was going to beat right out of him. "I feel like I don't even know her anymore. I love her, don't I? Danny, what do I do?"

Danny sighed and sat down on the ground, his back resting on the building. He raised his eyebrows at Steve and patted the ground next to him until Steve sat down as well. His voice soft again, Danny said, "I know I'm supposed to sit here and tell you it's just cold feet, and that you're going to be fine and happy. That's my job as the best man. That's my job and I'm trying to do it, I really am." He sighed again and shook his head. "But I can't, not with you talking like this. You gotta call off the wedding, Steven."

Steve leaned his head against Danny's shoulder. "When I got fitted for my tux," he said, rubbing the thumb of one hand with the other, "the guy told me I was lucky to be marrying my best friend. I didn't tell him that I'm not marrying my best friend."

"I suppose you could," Danny said, and he sounds sarcastic, but Steve knew Danny sometimes said real things with a sarcastic voice, so he could pretend he didn't mean them. "We're in Vegas, babe."

Steve looked over at Danny, and grew frustrated when Danny wouldn't look back at him. He grabbed Danny by the chin and turned his face until their eyes met. Danny looked sad. Maybe he was tired, because it was the middle of the night, but Steve was pretty sure at this point he'd figured out the difference between Danny's sad face and his tired face. 

Steve could only think of one thing that might cheer Danny up, so he leaned over and kissed Danny. 

~*~

Steve looks up from the marriage certificate and says, "Danny, it's real. I remember going to the chapel. I remember signing it." He shivers and sits down on the foot of the bed. "I remember coming back here and…"

Jaw agape, Danny lifts up the sheets and then tugs them back down, tight around his waist. "Shit."

"Yeah," Steve replies, dropping his face into his hands. "Oh, this is not good."

"Steve, I am so sorry," Danny says, and when Steve turns to look at him, he's got his hands out toward Steve. "In no way did I intend for this weekend to screw up your wedding to Catherine. I'll fix it. I'm gonna fix it. As soon as I find my pants, I'm gonna–"

"Danny, stop," Steve says, turning further toward Danny. "I was there, too. If I really wanted to marry Catherine, I wouldn't have done this." He holds up the marriage certificate. Motioning toward the bed and Danny's state of undress, Steve adds, "And I wouldn't have done _this_. It's my mess. I'm going to clean it up."

"Okaaaaaay," Danny says slowly, scratching at his ear. "What do you want me to do?"

Steve looks over at Danny, and remembers how it felt to kiss him and push him back against the sheets and revel in him like nothing else and no one else mattered. Steve scratches at the stubble on his cheek and ponders the situation for a moment. This could go one of several ways, but it strikes Steve that he can truly call Danny his family now, if he wants. So, he meets Danny's eyes and asks, "Move in with me?"

Danny laughs, his voice high as he says, "You can't be serious! Guy thinks he's funny, now. Got married in Vegas, and now he wants to move in, like–"

Steve has this fondness in his heart that he's always had with Danny, only now it feels even more important than it ever has before. Crawling up the bed toward Danny, Steve says, "I am serious. Unless you don't want to." He stops, sitting close enough to Danny that he can put his hand on Danny's wrist.

Swallowing loudly, Danny looks at the certificate on the end of the bed. He looks at Steve's hand on his wrist. He swallows again and says, "This is crazy. This is absolutely…" Danny doesn't finish his sentence. Instead, he pulls Steve close and kisses him.

Danny tastes stale, but Steve doesn't care. It feels right.

Steve can definitely say he's not at all looking forward to the fallout when they get back to Oahu. He's not looking forward to meeting Catherine's eye and telling her that yes he loves her, but he can't marry her because he doesn't trust her the way he trusts Danny. Hell, he's not even looking forward to what happens when Kono and the rest of the bachelor party track them down. 

Steve pulls away and asks Danny, "Do you think we're still going to have to go to couples' therapy?"

Danny laughs with a wide grin that catches the light filtering into the room around the curtains and makes Steve's heart feel too full. "Absolutely. Are you kidding me? Between all your issues, and all _my_ issues? Of course we will."

Steve laughs and kisses Danny again. "Whatever you say, Danno."

"Whatever I say?" Danny asks, and Steve can feel Danny's smile against his lips. "I like the sound of that."

~*~

"Well, don't you two look happy?" an older woman said when Steve and Danny stumbled into the chapel, hand-in-hand. "How long have you been together?"

"Five min–" Danny started to say, but Steve cut him off.

"Six years, two months, and three days," he said, looking over at Danny, who was smiling and shaking his head in that way he always did when he was amused by something Steve did. "He's my best friend. We're ready to get married."

The lady said, "Awww," and gestured them forward. "Let me show you our marriage packages. This one in particular is very popular these days."

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me [on tumblr](http://pterawaters.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Vegas Fallout](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7453876) by [elderwitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elderwitty/pseuds/elderwitty)




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